Victor Hugo Quotes

Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another.

He sought...to transform the grief which looks down into the grave by showing it the grief which looks up to the stars.

The flesh is the upper surface of the unknown.

Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides.

Poetry contains philosophy as the soul contains reason.

The earlier works of a man of genius are always preferred to the newer ones, in order to prove that he is going down instead of up.

Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book.

And if it happened to be a Christmas-night when the great bell seemed to rattle in its throat as it called the faithful to the midnight mass, there was such an indescribable air of life spread over the sombre facade that the great door-way looked as if it were swallowing the entire crowd, and the rose-window staring at them.

In the vast cosmical changes, the universal life comes and goes in unknown quantities, ... sowing an animalcule here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and ... entangling, from the highest to the lowest, all activities in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism, hanging the flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth... Enormous gearing, whose first motor is the gnat, and whose last wheel is the zodiac.

Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with one wounds himself with the other.

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

We are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve.

Progress is not accomplished in one stage.

To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time, especially in that kind of mock rurality, ugly but odd, and partaking of two natures, which surrounds certain large cities, particularly Paris.

Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.

This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.

To be wicked does not insure prosperity - for the inn did not succeed well.

Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous, and because it is impenetrable. You have beside you a sweeter radiance and a greater mystery, woman.

Close by the Rights of Man, at the least set beside them, are the Rights of the Spirit.

That men saw his mask, but the bishop saw his face. That men saw his life, but the bishop saw his conscience.

Science is continually correcting what it has said. Fertile corrections... science is a ladder... poetry is a winged flight... An artistic masterpiece exists for all time... Dante does not efface Homer.

Inanimate objects sometimes appear endowed with a strange power of sight. A statue notices, a tower watches, the face of an edifice contemplates.

I'm religiously opposed to religion.

A doctor’s door should never be closed, a priest's door should always be open.

We do not comprehend everything, but we insult nothing.

One only needs to see a smile in a white crape bonnet in order to enter the palace of dreams.

Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.

Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.

To think is of itself to be useful; it is always and in all cases a striving toward God.

Those who always pray are necessary to those who never pray.

Man's greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes - obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes.

They adored each other; but still the permanent and the immutable subsist. We may love and laugh, pout, clasp hands, smile, and exchange endearments, but that does not affect eternity. Two lovers hide in the dusk of evening, amid flowers and the twittering of birds, and enchant each other with their hearts shinning in their eyes; but the stars in their course still circle through infinite space.

We must never fear robbers or murderers. They are dangers from outside, small dangers. It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, vice the real murderer. Why should we be troubled by a threat to our person or our pocket? What we have to beware of is the threat to our souls'.

He is the best gentleman that is the son of his own deserts, and not the degenerated heir of another's virtue.

Woman, nude, is the blue sky. Clouds and garments are an obstacle to contemplation. Beauty and infinity would be gazed upon unveiled.

Is it not a thing divine to have a smile which, none know how, has the power to lighten the weight of that enormous chain which all the living in common drag behind them?

Do not ask the name of the person who seeks a bed for the night. He who is reluctant to give his name is the one who most needs shelter.

The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.

The soul has illusions as the bird has wings: it is supported by them.

It is man's consolation that the future is to be a sunrise instead of a sunset.

When two mouths, made sacred by love, draw near to each other to create, it is impossible, that above that ineffable kiss there should not be a thrill in the immense mystery of the stars.

Love is reducing the universe to one being.

If I have not been exposed and am not in any danger of pursuit. But I have been exposed, I am pursued - by myself! That is a pursuer that does not readily let go.

The soul has greater need of the ideal than of the real

Daring is the price of progress. All splendid conquests are the prize of boldness, more or less.

There are no weeds, and no worthless men. There are only bad farmers.